Rome's Zen of Up Your Yin Yang

What’s happened to this old lane of the dead?
A row of lights across the land, fulgent string
A buzzing of engines between walls
Labored breath, a shying away from strangers’ limbs
A look into emptiness between day and sleep.
And nonetheless on a short outing maybe
You recognize the gate again, the staggered wall
And across the field the fleeting arcades, the aqueducts
And the smell of grain, and the swallows’ black turret-like tails
Spun out into the golden sky. And that of the bats
That rises and falls with the wind. Yes, there you confront
Your no-longer-me. The stripping away, deliverance
From that which was and will be. But all this is gone
By the time you see the old cryptic tavern sign
“Here no one ever dies. Qui non si muore mai.”

[…] the way. The sign reads Here No-One Ever Dies (thank you Misera e stipend città) – read a poem set on the Appian Way and refers to this very “tavern” by Marie Luise Kaschnitz, translated by Alexander Booth. I love learning thats what the sign says. […]